‘There’s Time to Care for My Sick Mom Now’ — How Our Farm Tech Eliminates Backbreaking Labor
U Kyaw Hlaing once spent hours each day lugging water buckets in the hot sun, now irrigating his farm takes minutes
U Kyaw Hlaing, 56, guava farmer
“I’ve lived in Kyaung Gon village in the Irrawaddy Delta my whole life. Most people here are rice farmers. I share a house with my wife, my two daughters, my elderly sister and my mother. I love our house. It’s an old wooden one that I’ve lived in all my life. It’s quiet in the daytime but in the evenings when my daughters are there it fills up with laughter and conversation. My eldest daughter is 19 and wants to go into business; the youngest is 12 and wants to be a teacher, like I used to be.
I was 44 years old when I started farming. Before that, I taught at the village school, the same one my 12-year-old goes to, where I’d worked since 1981. I gave it up in 2007. One day I got home from school and found my dad unconscious in his chair not breathing. I shook him and after a while he woke up and caught his breath. It was really scary; he had heart problems. That was when I decided my father was too sick and I needed to leave teaching. There was a lot of farming to do and my older sister couldn’t manage on her own.
There were 400 guava trees to water. I would carry two large buckets on my shoulders with a yoke, starting at 7am and working until 11am to cover half the plot. Then for the rest of the plot I’d work from 3pm until six. When I wasn’t watering the guava I worked on the paddy field and tended to our cows. In the hot season the guava needed watering every single day. The buckets were bulky and heavy and I went between narrow rows of trees, and sometimes I’d catch the branches and they would snap off and I’d lose fruit. It was tiring and gave me back pain and pain in my chest, but I wasn’t about to quit. My father died four months after I left the school and my mother was sick. I knew it was up to me to care for the family and make an income. This is how it works in our family; we all do what we can to support each other.
Last year, the motor broke on the pump I used to fill the buckets from the well. When I spoke with the man who came to repair it he suggested I meet with someone he knew from Proximity who gives advice on irrigation. I ended up buying a sprinkler system last November. I’d thought about setting up something similar on my own before with PVC pipes, but it was too expensive. Proximity’s “Yetagon” system is better value and much higher quality.
It now takes about 10 minutes to water 100 trees. With the buckets it took two hours to do that. My yields are also much higher; I used to make about 300,000 kyat (USD 200) per harvest, three times a year. Now I make about 400,000 or 500,000 kyat per harvest, and in the hot season I can harvest every month. I get about 100 fruits per tree, whereas when I was struggling to water them properly I’d get about 50 or 60, and only 30 of those would be fit to sell. We’re going to use the extra money to invest in a small clothes shop that my wife started. We’re also using it for my mom’s healthcare costs. She’s 84 years old and has lung and heart problems and she can’t walk very well. Now that things are easier on the farm I can spend more time looking after her.”
